


The Boogeyman

by samsom



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samsom/pseuds/samsom
Summary: One night at the Bronze....late s1
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	The Boogeyman

~~

“Isn’t this great?” the vamp to his left asked in an excited tone, eyes darting the crowd while his fangs glowed white in the dark club. “Dozens of them.” 

There was hunger in the other vampire’s tone, the same hunger that gnawed at him. They weren’t supposed to eat, not yet anyway. The one at the front said it would disrupt the ceremony. 

But after….

Rem eyed the crowd, dozens of clubgoers out on a Friday night, no older than he was when he died, surrounded and flanked by more than a dozen vampires like him. The humans were scared, he tasted it like a tangy burn at the back of his throat. They milled together nervously, careful not to move too far or too fast. No one wanted to catch the attention of the vampires threaded through the crowd like riot cops. 

There were more girls than boys, which suited him fine, and he picked out his favorites while he waited for the ones in charge to get going. A girl with long blonde hair and an overdone face, another with long dark hair wearing a lacy little number that stopped mid-thigh. 

He smiled, hunger tickling at his teeth. 

A dark-haired boy stood near the brunette, one eye on her and one eye on the crowd. 

Rem lingered on him for a second.

His heart wasn’t pumping as fast as the other sheep….

Rem’s eyes shifted and he sniffed.

Come to think of it, neither was the brunette’s. 

Both were looking around, but not with fear showing in their eyes like the rest. More like they were looking for _something_. He scanned the crowd, trying to figure out what. But all he saw were meatsacks with loads of sweet blood coursing through their veins, and it made it so hard to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing.

He focused on one girl near a set of stairs that led to a loft.

A soft honey blonde in a red mini-skirt and black knee-high boots, sucking on a lollipop, looking like the main course of the massacre about to happen. 

Maybe he’d show her what else she could suck on before he drained her dry, he thought as he ran his tongue over his fangs.

She kept her eyes on the stage, the stick of that sucker bobbing constantly as she held the ball of the candy in her mouth. She should look more scared than she actually did, he was sure, a little thing like her. She should be trembling in those overpriced boots.

But some of them were like that, he’d seen. Too stupid to be scared. 

There was a scream as one of the other vamps grabbed a random human, moving fast to bring her to the stage. Rem glanced over at them for a second, to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important, before turning his attention back to his mark.

But she was gone, swallowed by all the nervous movement from the crowd. Then the vampire on the stage started talking and Rem switched his focus back to him, afraid he’d miss something. He didn’t want to get staked for not paying attention when he was supposed to be, and some of those fuckers were crazy enough to do that, stake their own kind. 

He’d heard of a few. 

The vamp on the stage started chanting slowly, the girl on the stage started squeaking, and Rem just _knew_ it was gonna be a while before he could sink his fangs into anything soft and delicious. 

He looked to his left and noticed the other hungry vampire wasn’t standing where he had been before. Rem looked around and frowned. 

The fuck he go?

The crowd was more settled, less panicky in their movements. The vampire on stage kept chanting, one hand holding a knife to the throat of his sacrifice, but something else was happening, something in the crowd, but he couldn’t see what it was. 

Then he noticed someone was moving through the people, like a shark he saw cutting through the still ocean once. A honey-blonde head shoulder-height to most of the boys and some of the girls. 

Darting a glance up, he didn’t see the other vampires standing in the wings of the stage earlier. 

They were gone now.

And, he confirmed with a glance, so were the ones standing by the doors in the back.

And that honey-blonde was still moving with surety through the crowd. 

Out of nowhere he remembered a few weeks back, when the cadre he ran with was asked about coming to this one-Starbucks town two hours from the lights of LA, because the energy was so good and the eating even better. 

One of the other vamps he hung with, older than all their ages combined, looked scared for the first time since they started hanging, and said no. 

Dude packed his shit that night, but not to go with them. One of the other ones, Mike or something, asked what the fuck was he so scared of. Dude said they were headed to a Hellmouth, and where there were hellmouths, there was usually a slayer. Then the guy was gone.

Rem asked Mike about that later, in the back of the blacked out van they took, and Mike just shrugged, and said it was just some story about a powered-up girl he’d heard a couple of times, but his sire had said it was nothing, just a boogeyman, a girl who fought like them, was stronger than them, who had been bred to kill their kind. But Mike laughed and said they, vampires, didn’t have a thing in this world to be scared of, that _they_ were the boogeymen, and the slayer was nothing more than a story. 

Last time he saw Mike, Rem recalled, he was by the back doors. 

Rem wondered if he should have asked more questions before getting in that van.

Maybe he should have stayed in LA, he thought, as that honey blonde head bobbed closer through the crowd.

Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten into that van because being part of something powerful sounded better than living in a sewer and sharing a human with six other vampires every other night.

 _Closer_.

And maybe he shouldn’t have left Iowa for LA in the first place, he thought, because looking for fame and fortune on the coast sounded better than driving a tracker in the baking sun day after day until he looked as leathered and worn as his daddy and grandad. 

_Closer came the boogeyman._

And maybe he should have studied harder in high school.

And then the girl with the lollipop-stained lips was in front of him.

“You don’t look like the boogeyman.” He said accusingly.

She didn’t look like anything but a cheerleader out for fun on a Friday night. How many of them had he drained in the few months since he woke up in that morgue? A dozen or more. What made her any different? 

And why couldn’t he just drain her too and finish this stupid ceremony he wasted his immortality on? 

She tilted her head slightly. 

“Huh?” She said, and he looked into her eyes.

He watched as her hazel gaze changed, a darkness at the center of her pupils spreading out to cover the greens and blacks of her irises, and he could swear he saw a few thousand years in those eyes, back all the way to before language was spoken. 

He was so mesmerized by the shift that he didn’t notice her arm drawing back until it was almost too late –

“Wait-”

~~

Buffy watched as the vampire exploded, then jumped onto the stage to take care of the rest, leaving the dust to whirl through the air like a little dervish before drifting apart. 

~end~


End file.
